Shoebox Animation

I’ve made posters, I’ve sent Instagram images, I started Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but I need more off the wall ideas to get some interest, I thought animation might attract some.

It seemed like a nice quick easy thing to do... It started well, just use cutouts maybe, do it all in Apple Motion, simple 3-D camera moves, bit of smoke maybe. Then I thought why not do it for real!

Two weeks later, two sets of sharp blades blunted and dozens of sheets of foam card, I get to create the shoebox animation.

The idea is to get a simple shoebox that magically turns into a theatre. Travelling through the box reveals the World of my comic book and we just track through it, ending with the eyes graphic that I use on the comic promos.

It took quite a while, but went reasonably welL, but then I realised that you couldn’t tell it was a shoebox.

A new section, creating a whole new scene involving Dom, who graciously agreed to step in and be the character who throws the box on the table and then watches it transform. Considering Greenscreen filming is something that I do for a living, you would think that would’ve been the easy part, however, as is often the way when you just create stuff on a whim, common sense goes out of the window. My first mistake was not considering what was on the desk on the second pass, so it took quite some time and Black Magic Fusion to Rotoscope the box and the extra pieces that were doubling up in the shot. Still it works very well and I’m reasonably pleased with it. Let me know what you think.

film42

I'm Trev, author of Myth of the K’inti and a Cinematographer. Being something of hybrid, I’ve amassed a set of skills during my career and work across disciplines. I collaborate on creative projects and work with crews, filming broadcast content around the World. Back at base I work with Avid to edit and a range of tools including Cinema 4D, Fusion, Photoshop and Unreal Engine to create CGi content.

For the Myth of the K’inti comic book series I collaborate with Dom Tsoi, a talented illustrator.

Tell us what you think!

Trev and Dom at MotK are always keen to get feedback about the Comics, cinematography, the website, or the meaning of life. We love creative collaboration so drop us a line any time.